This is a survey of ancient Greek history from the Bronze Age to the death of Socrates in 399 BCE. Along with studying the most important events and personalities, we will consider broader issues such as political and cultural values and methods of historical interpretation.

GL

Well presented, wonderful insight into the world of the ancient Greeks. I learnt a lot, and it has whetted my appetite for more. I really loved this course, and enjoyed it very much indeed

MC

Sep 23, 2016

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Fantastic course. Information packed, but not overwhelming. The links to online readings provide nice context for a lot of the lectures, but weren't in any way daunting. Highly recommend!

De la lección

"The Great 50 Years" (ca. 480-431 BCE)

Module 5 surveys the period between the end of the Persian Wars and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, which came to be known as Athens’ “Golden Age.” After the Persian Wars, there grew an alliance of Greek states that was meant to maintain security. The allies asked the Athenians to lead the confederation, called the Delian League. We will examine how the league was gradually transformed into an empire dominated by Athens. We will also discuss the extraordinary Pericles, who was a leader in the expansionist Athenian democracy and shaped many of its policies. In addition we will pay some overdue attention to the role of women in Greek society, with a consideration of the character of Antigone and a more general assessment of women’s status. We will conclude with an – again, too brief – account of the great building program that produced the Parthenon and the other renowned monuments on the Athenian Acropolis.

Impartido por:

Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, PhD

Professor

Transcripción

We've seen how the Greek states got together and fended off the Persian invasions and after the victories, the Greek victories at Platia and Mcalla in 479 there was kind of a general sense of euphoria. There are also three practical results of the war. First, the Persian threat was effectively at an end. Secondly, there was at least briefly a sense of Greek unity. Exemplified by a dedicatory offering that the Greek Spades made at Delphi. The column of which still remains in downtown Istanbul in Turkey, was taken from Delphi by the emperor Constantine in the 4th century CE. And this has a very simple inscription. These fought the war, the Lacedaimonians, the Athenians, the Corinthians, the Tegeans, the Sicyonians, the Aeginetans and then there are 25 more names. What this symbolizes is a fairly short lived sense of Greek political unity. The crisis of the Persian invasions had forced the normally squabbling poleis to come together and for a short time, at least, they felt that way. This is also a major ideological shift, one of very many we're going to see in this period. Because what we have here is now a distinction, an absolute distinction between Greek and not Greek, or as the Greeks called them, barbarians. The definition is not so much one of culture, that is, barbarians are not necessarily uncouth or cannibals or live in caves. What they do is not speak Greek. And the barbarians par excellence. The foreigners par excellence. The other were the Persians. So, end to Persian threat. Brief sense of Greek unity. But, qualifying this last, is the fact that Athens and Sparta emerge as the two dominant or hegemonic polis in this group. You can see it in here that they're first on the list. We're going to go on to talk about what happens next, but I'm going to pause for just a moment to consider the histories, the brief personal histories of two of the heroes of the Persian Wars. One of them is the Spartan, Pausanias. He had been the victor at Plataea, and gained enormous privilege and prestige from his victory, and then went up to the northeast in the area around Byzantium, that is the Hellespont. To do some mopping up operations. But while he was there he was so arrogant and acted so, well seemingly, as people say now, he was going native. He was starting to wear Persian clothing and the Greeks under his command, especially the Ionians, were very put off by this. Pausanias was recalled to Sparta and disciplined, then sent out again and recalled again this time under more serious charges. And we're told that as he was walking through the streets of Sparta, he caught the eye of one of the ephors who was coming toward him. Remember the ephors, those five civic officials. Realizing that he was in trouble, he fled to a temple and took sanctuary there, became a suppliant. The Spartans walled him in, and as he was on the brink of death from dehydration and starvation, they brought him out so he wouldn't pollute the temple. And he died in Sparta around 467, a scant dozen years after his great victory. Themistocles, likewise, has a very checkered career. After the war he engaged in another one of his famous ruses. The Spartans were proposing that those cities North of the Peloponnese remain unwalled as a sign of kind of general Greek unity. The Athenians thought this was not such a great idea. And Themistocles himself went down to Sparta and stalled. While he was sending secret messages back to his fellow Athenians to build the walls back up as rapidly as they could with whatever they could. And the Spartans sent an, an embassy up to Athens to find out what was going on, and they were politely but firmly detained. Finally, when the walls, which had been destroyed by the Persians, had been rebuilt to a defensible height. Themistocles got a secret message that this had happened, apologized to his Spartan host for the deception, the Spartan embassy was set back unharmed, thank God. But as one modern historian says, it was not a promising beginning. Themistocles too had enormous power and prestige. But a long with this as we have seen over and over comes the growth of political antagonism. His political enemies were not idle and you can see here a set of ostraka, those pot shards that were used. For the ritual exile of one man and you have Themistocles on all of these, described either as the Themistocles, son of Neocles or Themistocles from deemed [unknown]. Remember the deem identification for the Athenian citizen was so important. Themistocles had, en, encouraged his fellow Athenians as we know, to build up their navy. He also encouraged them to fortify the Pariahs. But, his political enemies finally did manage to get him ostracized, in 47170. That is again a scant, well, say, 9 years after his victory at Salamis. He first went to the south, to Argos, where he seems to have engaged in some kind of anti-Spartan agitation. Spartans complained Themistocles fled, and where did he go? Into Persia. He became a sort of advisor on Greek affairs in the court of the new Persian King, and he died there. I mention these two because the stories are so vivid, but also because there kind of an emblematic of what happens to so many of the leaders in the Greek world at this time. Back to the Greeks at large. I said a moment ago that the Persian threat had effectively been ended but the Greeks weren't sure of that. They can't be in the aftermath of this kind of enormous war especially with an enemy as huge and as wealthy as Persia. Can't be sure that they're not going to come back. Here's where Pausanias behavior becomes important, because his arrogance so alienated the allies that they got together and they asked the Athenians to lead a defensive alliance. So the year after Platia and Mcalla that is we think roughly 4787. The Greeks formed a league. It was centered on the tiny cyclotic island of Delos right here in the center. You can see. This had been an age old sacred place. It was sacred to Apollo and Artemis because in myth it was their birthplace, it's where their mother Leto had gone to give birth. It was a Panhellenic sanctuary, that is it was a place where Greeks from all over, especially from the islands, came to worship and it had a long Athenian connection. Back in the 6th century, the tyrant Pisistratus has overseen a purification of the island. Moving some graves away from the central shrine. So on Delos then, Apollo and Artemis reigned. Delos is often represented as a palm tree, and here are the, the powerful twin deities. And you can see, as well, the remnants of all the religious buildings on this stony little outcrop. The French have been digging there for ages and they keep finding new things. It's an extraordinarily rich archaeological site. I can't resist showing you all one of the famous set of statues, the so called Lion Colonnade, dedicated by the island of Naxos. At any rate, the Athenians were asked to lead a league centered on Delos, and the principles were as follows: there was to be a league assembly in which each of the states had an equal vote. Moreover, each of the states, the member states, was guaranteed autonomy. That is the right to determine its own internal political course and external political relations, as long as they didn't involve fraternizing with the Persians obviously. And provides some kind of annual support for the league activities. The idea was Themistocles' great insight had been that the Persians could not conduct a successful attack without a navy. The land forces could be stopped at any number of places along the way even if they came across, as we saw them stopped at Thermopylae. But what we want to do is as a friend of mine have, has said to keep the east Aegean a Persian-free zone. And so what we have is league assembly, guarantee of autonomy and annual contributions. And this is where it gets tricky because the annual contributions could take the form either of money or of ships. If they were ships they belonged to the member state. They were on loan, so to speak, to the league for however long they needed, probably for about a year, and then would return to their parent state. Cash, however, was deposited in a central treasury maintained on Delos but used by the Athenians to build ships in Athens manned by Athenian sailors. You can see where this is heading, and we'll look at it much more carefully as we go on for the next couple of lectures. The allies had in effect established for themselves the mechanism, or the prelude to Athenian domination. But what we also see here, and unmistakably, is a huge conceptual change. No longer was this the old war of Hoplites, those middling men, those citizen soldiers. Who provided themselves with their own armor, who were mustered generally for a fairly brief time to deal with a specific crisis or threat and then disperse back to their farms. Instead, now what we have is warfare, at least potentially year-round. The Navy was kept on constant con, patrol, sure. Keep the Persians away, but also eventually to collect those contributions, which came to be called tribute. To show the flag, to collect intelligence, and moreover manned by sailors for whom this was their job. They received state pay. I want to emphasize the fact that a navy is economically very costly. It requires a constant cash flow. You have to build the ships, maintain them, outfit them. Maintain the ports and the harbors and the docks and pay the sailors. So what we're seeing here is not only the development of a new league of Greek states, but of an entirely new way of thinking about the relation of an individual to the larger Greek community, if you want to think of it that way. But also to the whole activity of warfare. And what we'll trace next time is how this voluntary league gradually developed into an Athenian empire.